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Society needs information and communication technology (ICT) hardware to produce, process and store highly valuable information. This hardware, of course, affects the environment throughout its whole life cycle, starting with manufacturing, where the necessary scarce and precious resources (e.g. rare earth metals) are often mined under miserable environmental conditions. This leads to pollution of soil, water and air in the present as well as for the future. During the use phase of ICT hardware, energy consumption impacts the environment. At the end of life of ICT hardware, recycling, disposing as e-waste in landfills or disassembling are additional impacts that affect the environment. More and more producers and users, especially companies, want to measure these impacts, which is a complex task. However, approaches to measure the impacts are at hand, either as single indicators, measuring one specific impact, or as composed indicators, combining different single indicators into one "summarizing" indicator. However, collection of data, measurement, assessment and interpretation are challenging. Unfortunately, guidelines for those who want to measure the impact of ICT hardware are rare. With our research, we aim to shed light on the various approaches to measure impacts of ICT hardware as well as their application in practice. Based on a literature review, we identified different indicators and them to the attention of experts from companies to assess these approaches in terms of practicability, significance and value for practice. The results show that research investigates and proposes a variety of different more or less complex indicators. However, business prefers single indicators, which are easy to measure and understand.

Thesis (M.S.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2003. / Title from title screen (viewed May 14, 2004). "June 2003." Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-129). Also issued in paper format.

Since the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) has deeply influenced the public sector across the world, and thus measuring or managing performance has become a principal element of government reform. In terms of borrowing models and techniques from the private sector, performance measurement has been significantly extended into government, but differences between the two sectors have led to difficulties and criticism of this practice with a wide inconsistent variety of different theoretical explanations about it. In this context, this thesis investigates the effectiveness of performance measurement and theoretical explanations of conditions for its success in the public sector. It focuses through a comparative methodology on Comprehensive Performance Assessment and Joint Performance Assessment that have recently been introduced between the levels of government in England and Korea for the improvement of local government performance and accountability. Extensive analysis of literature and case studies have allowed the thesis to find firstly, that the introduction of such unique assessment systems, by which the centre assesses localities, was deeply affected by the environmental commonalities of both countries such as centralisation in inter-governmental relations and enthusiasm for NPM. Second, the empirical evaluation of both tools shows that they have in practice been valid for accurate assessment, and directly functional for improvement and indirectly for accountability to the public. Their high validity and functionality proved to be mainly attributable to two characteristics. One was institutionally that both frameworks were based on a balanced approach to performance and the disclosure of assessment results to the public for facilitating competition between localities. The other was that both had impacted on internal management of local government which led to change in organisational culture with more focus on performance. However, it identified a necessity for local authorities to participate in the development process of those tools to ensure legitimacy of central management of local performance since they enjoy their own electorally based political support. The research has also found the importance of assessors’ expertise for accurate assessment and a possibility that performance measurement can contribute to the resolution of political tension and cooperation between central and local government when it focuses more on outcomes than input and process. A deeper theoretical and practical understanding of these successful experiences and important policy elements in contemporary public management contributes significantly to knowledge in the three settings of evaluation of policy instruments, comparison between countries and central-local relations. Finally, the study assists each country and others to draw lessons from each other.

Thesis (M.Eng. (Control Engineering)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-102)

Performance management, which is a core element of the New Public Management (NPM), has maintained its significance both in academic and practical perspectives for many scholars and governments, although enthusiasm for the NPM has waned since the late 1990s. There have been debates on the universality of the NPM, and the divergence argument regards the practices and trajectories of specific reforms as being shaped by the different characteristics of politico-administrative and cultural systems. Through the comparative study of performance management based on the case studies in the UK and South Korea, this thesis demonstrates that the processes of a NPM-type reform can be similar in spite of differences of politico-administrative and cultural characteristics. It examines performance management systems in the two countries in terms of the speed and nature of reform, resistance to reform, use of performance information and importance as a control mechanism. The comparison is also useful for lesson-drawing for the improvement of current systems. This research has been conducted by undertaking a wide literature review, including journal articles and government papers, and by conducting semi-structured interviews. To undertake analysis and comparison of performance management systems, the thesis looks at the Public Service Agreements (PSAs) in the UK and the Government Performance Evaluation (GPE), Financial Performance Management System (FPMS) and Performance Agreements in Korea. Case studies have been carried out with the Department of Health in the UK and the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs in Korea. The PSA system has problems generated by excessive central control and lack of participation of professionals and front-line staff. In Korea all three performance management systems are based on evaluation. Departments used evaluation as a tool of exercising control, which resulted in duplication of evaluation and excessive bureaucracy. Focus on the process-oriented evaluation has undermined the value of the systems for improving public services. Whilst the two countries display differences in the fundamental approach to performance management, there are similarities in the detailed practices and trajectories in the operation of the systems. The reason for these similarities may be attributed to the strong leadership of top politicians in both countries.

There is a growing interest and research on improvement of business processes as an essential part of effective quality management. Process improvement is possible with measurement and analysis of the process performance. Process performance measurement has been studied to a certain extend in the literature, and many different approaches have been developed such as Sink-Tuttle Model, Performance Measurement Matrix, SMART Pyramid, Balanced Scorecard Approach, Critical Few Method, and Performance Prism Framework. These approaches require that process owners and analysts define appropriate measures based on general guidelines for each process separately. Recently, with the advancement of information technologies, modeling and simulation of processes on a computer aided platform has become possible / standards and software support regarding such applications have been developed. Even though increasingly many organizations have been building their process models on computers, only a few manages effective use of such models for process improvement. This is partly due to difficulties in defining appropriate performance measures for the processes. The purpose of this study is to propose a method that can be used for defining performance measures of business processes easily and effectively according to specific nature of these processes. The proposed performance measure definition system is based on the idea of using generic process performance measures published by trusted business process frameworks for high level processes and adapting them for lower level ones. The system, using a search mechanism available on a computer, allows users to easily find and define appropriate performance measures for their processes. The proposed system is used for a research project management process and a creating research opportunities process of a public university and the results are discussed.

The purpose of my research is to contribute to the field of forecasting from a methodological perspective as well as to the field of crude oil as an application area to test the performance of my methodological contributions and assess their merits. In sum, two main methodological contributions are presented. The first contribution consists of proposing a mathematical programming based approach, commonly referred to as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), as a multidimensional framework for relative performance evaluation of competing forecasting models or methods. As opposed to other performance measurement and evaluation frameworks, DEA allows one to identify the weaknesses of each model, as compared to the best one(s), and suggests ways to improve their overall performance. DEA is a generic framework and as such its implementation for a specific relative performance evaluation exercise requires a number of decisions to be made such as the choice of the units to be assessed, the choice of the relevant inputs and outputs to be used, and the choice of the appropriate models. In order to present and discuss how one might adapt this framework to measure and evaluate the relative performance of competing forecasting models, we first survey and classify the literature on performance criteria and their measures – including statistical tests – commonly used in evaluating and selecting forecasting models or methods. In sum, our classification will serve as a basis for the operationalisation of DEA. Finally, we test DEA performance in evaluating and selecting models to forecast crude oil prices. The second contribution consists of proposing a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) based approach as a multidimensional framework for relative performance evaluation of the competing forecasting models or methods. In order to present and discuss how one might adapt such framework, we first revisit MCDA methodology, propose a revised methodological framework that consists of a sequential decision making process with feedback adjustment mechanisms, and provide guidelines as to how to operationalise it. Finally, we adapt such a methodological framework to address the problem of performance evaluation of competing forecasting models. For illustration purposes, we have chosen the forecasting of crude oil prices as an application area.

Die Zielsetzung der vorliegenden Dissertationsschrift besteht in der Entwicklung einer systematisierten Vorgehensweise, eines Controllingmodells, zur unternehmensinternen Umweltleistungsmessung. Das entwickelte Environmental Performance Measurement (EPM)-Modell umfaßt die fünf Stufen Festlegung der Ziele der Umweltleistungsmessung (1. Stufe), Erfassung der Umwelteinflüsse nach der ökologischen Erfolgsspaltung (2. Stufe), Bewertung der Umwelteinflüsse auf der Grundlage des qualitätszielbezogenen dreistufigen Bewertungsmodells (3. Stufe), Beurteilung der festgestellten Umweltleistung (4. Stufe) und Entscheidungsfindung bzw. potentielle Revision der Ziele (5. Stufe). Diese Stufen können den Controlling-Phasen Planung [Zielfestlegung und potentielle Revision (1. und 5. Stufe)], Realisation [Erfassung und Bewertung (2. und 3. Stufe)] sowie Kontrolle [Beurteilung (4. Stufe)] zugeordnet werden. Das EPM-Modell wurde in Anlehnung an die Kriterien des Performance Measurement und bisheriger Ansätze der betrieblichen Umweltleistungsmessung konzipiert. Insbesondere die Anlehnung an die Kriterien des Performance Measurement wurde bei der Entwicklung des EPM-Modells gesucht, um zum einen die neuen Ansätze im Bereich der betrieblichen Leistungsmessung zu berücksichtigen und zum anderen eine Kompatibilität zwi-schen betrieblicher Leistungsmessung und Umweltleistungsmessung zu erzeugen. Diese Kompatibilität zeigt sich z. B. in der Entwicklung der Eco Balanced Scorecard. Wichtige Charakteristika des EPM-Modells sind auf der Grundlage der identifizierten Kriterien : · die Ausrichtung der Ziele für die Umweltleistungsmessung sowie der Erfassungs- und Bewertungsverfahren auf die Stakeholder-Interessen; dadurch Abbildung der Umweltleistungsfähigkeit, · die Durchführung der ökologischen Erfolgsspaltung bei der Erfassung der Umwelteinflüsse, · die Ermittlung des Zielerreichungsgrades auf Basis der ökologischen Erfolgsspaltung sowie die Bestimmung der Ursa-chen für potentielle Zielverfehlungen und -erreichungen. Die 2. (Erfassung), 3. (Bewertung) und 4. Stufe (Beurteilung) des EPM-Modells wurden empirisch für die deutsche Maschinenbaubranche überprüft; eine Umsetzbarkeit der genannten Stufen konnte dabei konstatiert werden.

As mobile devices are nowadays used regularly and everywhere, their energy consumption has become a central concern for their users. However, mobile applications often do not consider energy requirements and users have to install and try them to reveal information on their energy behavior. In this paper, we compare mobile applications from two domains and show that applications reveal different energy consumption while providing similar services. We define microbenchmarks for emailing and web browsing and evaluate applications from these domains. We show that non-functional features such as web page caching can but not have to have a positive influence on applications' energy consumption.